Modern Language. English Skills for Psychology

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)

• 5. Gender equality

Objectives

In today's global context, access to information has reached a critical importance. It is estimated that 80% of information stored in electronic format is in the English language, and around 50% of all scientific and academic publications are written in English. For this reason, this subject will work on the ability to extract, understand and produce information in the English language orally and in writing.

Students will have to:

• acquire the habit of consulting written and oral documents in the English language as a source of information on topics related to psychology.
• acquire tools, techniques and strategies to be able to access information in written and oral documents in the English language.
• acquire sufficient resources to be able to understand and interpret texts from the scientific, academic and professional fields.
• develop strategies to express themselves in writing and orally in the English language.
• develop their autonomy when synthesizing and summarizing information from oral and written texts.
• know and use the appropriate grammatical structures and vocabulary for the academic context and the subject of psychology.
• develop skills for oral presentations in English.

Competencies

General skills

• Acquire and update competencies, skills and knowledge to professional standards.
• Be able to communicate in speech and in writing in one's own language and in other languages and communicate non-verbally and audiovisually.
• Be able to work as part of a team and cooperate effectively.
• Have interpersonal skills.
• Recognise and respect human diversity.

Specific skills

• Be able to provide appropriate and accurate feedback to subjects.
• Know how to produce oral and written reports.

Basic skills

• Students can communicate information, ideas, problems and solutions to both specialists and non-specialists.

Core skills

• Become the protagonist of one's own learning process in order to achieve personal and professional growth and acquire all-round training for living and learning in a context of respect for linguistic, social, cultural, gender and economic diversity.
• Use oral, written and audiovisual forms of communication, in one's own language and in foreign languages, with a high standard of use, form and content.

Content

1. Strategies for academic reading

• Effective reading
• Reading for an overview
• Focused reading
   

2. Strategies for academic writing

• Sentence structure, word order and connectors
• Paragraph structure: thesis, development and conclusion
• Text structure
• Citations and paraphrasing
   

3. Strategies for oral presentations

• Strategies for understanding academic oral presentations
• The process of preparing an oral presentation
• The language of oral presentations
• Participating in a focus group
   

4. Academic vocabulary

• Effective use of dictionaries

Evaluation

The evaluation of the subject will be continuous, based on the personal work, the directed work, the partial tests, the oral presentation, and the participation in the classroom.

Process evaluation:

• Personal work: preparation, presentation and correction of assignments (readings and written productions) in accordance with the agreed deadlines
• Directed work: the preparatory work corresponding to the oral and written presentation in English of a topic related to psychology
• Participation: attending the sessions with the work prepared and participating in the discussions of the exercises in a productive way

Evaluation of results:

• 2 partial exams: tests to assess the assimilation of the content.
• Group work: oral presentation in English of a topic related to psychology. The oral presentation will be done in group, although the grade is individual.

The final grade is calculated through the following components:

• 2 Compulsory activities:                 20% (one of them may be retaken)
• Exam 1:                                          20% (may be retaken)
• Exam 2:                                          20% (may be retaken)
• Project:                                          20% (cannot be retaken)
• Class activities:                              20% (cannot be retaken)

To pass the subject, each of the evaluated elements must be approved separately, except for class activities. However, if the final mark is to be under 5, class activities can be the only way to get a higher average mark.

The works presented must be unpublished and prepared by the student themself. In the event of any doubt regarding the authorship of a written assignment, the teacher reserves the right to orally question the student to verify their understanding of the content.

Resit of assessable elements:

All parts must be passed separately with a minimum of 5 and only exams and compulsory activities can be retaken. Students can only retake 50% of the assessment of the course, according to the current Normativa Acadèmica de Grau.

The recovery of the exams and/or the compulsory activities will be done during the recovery week. Any activity or exam that is made up, will get a maximum mark of 5.

Retakes are only for students who have failed the first assessment. You cannot retake any activity or exam if you did not take the first assessment.

You cannot resubmit already approved work, or retake exams, to get a better grade.

If one (or more) of the assessable elements remains under 5 after the recovery period, the entire subject must be repeated.

Methodology

To achieve the skills and objectives of the course it is essential to attend all class sessions regularly and with the material that will have been delivered for each session.

• Class sessions: teaching aimed at the whole group to transmit and work on the contents of the subject through written texts and audiovisual materials
• Directed work: work in small groups in which the students, with the guidance of the teaching staff, will have to solve the doubts and difficulties that arise from the personal work. The sessions will also serve for the students to carry out research work on academic texts in the English language. During group work, the attendance of each of the group members is mandatory
• Personal work: work that the students will have to invest in the preparation and implementation of the proposed activities - above all readings and related tasks, and development of their own lexical resources
• Individual tutorials: sessions to monitor the learning process of each student. Throughout the semester, individual tutoring will take place at the request of the student or teacher
• Work Plan: it is the tool used to plan the work that the student must do for each of the subjects. It will be delivered at the beginning of the semester so that the student can organize personal work

Bibliography

Key references

• (2014). Oxford Learner's Dictionary of Academic English. Oxford.
• De Chazal, E. & Rogers, L. (2013). Oxford EAP. A course in English for Academic Purposes (Intermediate/B1+). Oxford.
• Murphy, R. (2005). English Grammar in Use. Cambridge.
• Philpot, S. & Curnick, L. (2011). Headway. Academic Skills. Reading, Writing and Study Skills. Oxford.
• Swan, M. (2017). Practical English Usage. Oxford.

Further reading

Teachers will provide complementary bibliography and compulsory reading throughout the course via the Virtual Campus.